An environmental activist, educator, and intrepid traveler
recounts his efforts to protect the wilderness.

In May 1970, Henley (As If the Earth Matters: Recommitting to
Environmental Education, 2007, etc.), soon to be a senior at Michigan
State University, took off for a summer of backpacking in Mt. McKinley National
Park. Suddenly, he received word from his parents that he was wanted by the FBI
for failure to respond to a draft notice. An objector to the Vietnam War,
Henley became a fugitive—and his life of adventure began. For much of the early
1970s, the author traveled around Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, taking odd
jobs and living among the hippies, conscientious objectors, and assorted
eccentric characters with whom he shared “a throbbing sense of community
spirit” and copious amounts of cannabis. Ending up in Haida Gwaii in Queen
Charlotte Sound, he felt a powerful, visceral connection to the land. When he
discovered that the South Moresby Wilderness Area was threatened by the logging
industry, he mounted a vigorous environmental campaign. “Its creation,” he
writes, “marked the first registered environmental group in Islands’ history.”
At the same time, Henley saw the need to educate Haida children about nature:
the area had a high juvenile crime rate as well as considerable antipathy
between First Nation and nonindigenous boys and girls. With the support of the
community, he established the Rediscovery program and camps that grew to become
recognized “as a global model for reconciliation.” The Haida adopted him,
giving him the clan name Raven Walks Around the World, but Henley’s rigorous,
often perilous adventures hardly stopped in that community. Consumed by
wanderlust, he traveled to 130 countries on every continent, including
Antarctica, by air, land, and sea. Lecturing on a superluxurious private ship,
he reflected on his peripatetic life: “From hitchhiking barefoot and penniless
in Central America to cruising aboard the largest and most exclusive passenger
vessel that continually circumnavigates the globe, I’d pretty much seen it
all.”

A celebration of nature and passionate call for stewardship of
the planet.

An Irish expatriate steps back into a nightmare from her student
days.

Alison Smith left St. Johns College in Dublin two days after her
boyfriend was arrested for murdering five female students, and she’s stayed
away for nearly 10 years. She’s found contentment of a sort at a job in the
Netherlands, though she continues to resist a friend’s attempts to set her up
with eligible men. Then two Irish detectives come to her door and ask her to
come home and talk to her ex, Will Hurley. He’s been in a psychiatric hospital
ever since he confessed to being the killer who preyed on lone female students.
But now another victim’s body has been found in Dublin’s Grand Canal, and Will
says he has information he’ll share only with Alison. Even though she's spent
the last decade pretending her year at St. Johns never happened, Alison agrees
to help Will prove his innocence. It’s a plus that Michael Malone, one of the
two Garda detectives who brought her back to Dublin, also thinks Will is
telling the truth. In flashbacks, we see Alison's excitement at leaving her childhood
home in Cork for Dublin, searching for student digs and going to parties, her
romance with Will, and her growing doubts about her BFF Liz’s friendship. But
she never doubted Will, never suspected him, and never thought that her desire
to tell the truth would lead to his guilty plea. It’s partly to right that
unintentional wrong—and partly because of the encouragement from Detective
Malone—that she tries to find the real Canal Killer. Amid distracting details
about clothes and cushions, she confronts not only a past tragedy, but a
current threat.

Although Howard (Distress Signals, 2017) meanders a bit
through the streets and shops and pubs of Cork and Dublin, she picks up the
pace when it most matters—and tosses a lovely curveball at the end, too.

An Everyman detective is asked to solve a murder in a wealthy
community in which ample motives and abundant resources make everyone a
suspect.

Caroline Campbell wishes to celebrate her husband’s 65th
birthday in the low-key manner dictated by her breeding. Ostentatious
announcements are for other people. So Caro invites several of her and John
E.’s closest friends for a weekend at their rural Pennsylvania getaway, Bucolia
Farm. As author Richard (Naughty Nana,
2013) shows the guests receiving the engraved invitations, each of the
eponymous one-percenters gives clues about what readers may grow to revile
about them: greed, pretension, lust. When the guests are assembled, it appears
that most are united in their dislike of one of their own. Preston Phillips,
who’s earned his invitation as the hostess’s first cousin, is as much a draw to
partygoers as he is a repellant. Some have come to Bucolia just to settle a
score with Preston. Marshall and Julia Winthrop have been on the wrong side of
Preston’s shady business dealings. Vicki and Leon Spiller seem to blame Preston
for the death of their teenage son many years ago. For other attendees,
feelings about Preston are more mixed. His former fiancee, Margo, whom he left
at the altar years ago, finds herself almost willing to make amends. When
Preston doesn’t make it through the celebration weekend alive, Detective Oliver
Parrott, who takes charge of the case, is so struck by the partygoers’
consensual impressions of the selfish businessman that he realizes the case may
be more about who didn’t kill Preston than who did.

Richard’s inclination to favor the one-percenters’ perspectives may
leave readers craving more of the wicked socialite skewing that’s employed only
intermittently in her adult mystery debut.

A middle-grade novel tells the story
of an outsider who searches for something that will make him special.

Jarrod likes bugs. He keeps them in
his bedroom and feels that they are misunderstood, just like he is. (Especially
the cockroaches he’s training.) Jarrod can identify lots of different insects.
He knows all about them and is happy to share. This, unfortunately, has made
him an outcast. He has one friend, Gavin, but to all the other eighth-graders—indeed,
to the rest of the school—he is “Bug-boy.” If that weren’t bad enough, Jarrod
has a condition. Every couple of days or so, without warning or explanation, he
passes out. Nobody knows why, but he has to wear a helmet—all the time. The
helmet makes him look like a bug, setting him further apart. Life is difficult;
even Gavin seems as if he’s drifting away. But then Jarrod swallows a fly, and
suddenly everything makes sense. His condition isn’t a weakness at all: It’s a
superpower (of sorts) stemming from his affinity for bugs. But who will believe
him? How’s he going to track down the sickening puppy mill he’s just seen
through the eyes of a fly? Stewart writes in the first-person, present tense,
bringing intimacy to Jarrod’s isolation and immediacy to his plight. The boy’s
regular bug eating—which forms an integral part of the story, described
copiously and in graphic detail—won’t be to everyone’s taste. (He can access
the memories of the pests he devours.) Yet there’s no denying the gross-out
appeal of Jarrod’s metamorphosis from passive introvert to proactive,
insect-crunching champion. His relationships, moreover, are worked neatly into
the plot and add depth to Stewart’s (The River Keepers, 2017, etc.)
lively book. Jarrod’s interactions with his parents show how superficial his
differences really are; so too do his friendship with Gavin and his awkward
introduction to a student called Dog-girl and the unlikely prospect of romance.
Jarrod, in short, is a character whom many young readers will recognize,
perhaps with unkind preconceptions. But before they know it, they’ll likely
have embraced his aptitude—his “thing”—and be rooting for him.

Unabashedly, a young hero from the margins
shocks, then ultimately conquers the mainstream in this strangely compelling
oddity.

An unusual cast of characters
interacts in an odd, circular tale translated from the French.

The opening pages inform readers
that “This is the story of… / a Rabbit who wants to grow up; an anxious Stag; a
Soldier at war; a Cat who keeps having the same dream; a Book who wants to know
everything; and a Shadow.” The narrative begins with a chapter about the child
Rabbit and the Stag that adopts it, following which each character has its own
section. The story builds as the characters’ separate tales become intertwined with
one another’s and ends full circle back with the Stag and the Rabbit. As the
story unfolds, the characters explore their emotions with symbolism looming
large; the disconsolate Rabbit weeps at the bottom of a hole; the Soldier
pursues adventure in the form of an erupting volcano. They bare their souls in
dialogue, and the Soldier, referred to with masculine pronouns, takes off his
helmet and is revealed to be a girl. All are stuck in place in some fashion,
but their interactions help them move on. The line-and-watercolor
illustrations—mostly vignettes, though there are some full-page
paintings—heighten the moodiness. The overall effect is a somewhat moralistic picture
book about birth, coming-of-age, and death that demands contemplative readers
with a high tolerance for the surreal.

With 56 pages, a meandering plot,
and characterization that tends toward the symbolic, this is a picture book for
patient, older readers. (Picture book. 4-7)

Two lesbian teens with very
different backgrounds meet at a writers’ retreat.

Tess is a poor, white
Franco-American farm girl from a New Hampshire military family, an author of
fan fiction who hopes to gain confidence before her West Point interview. Soph is
an extremely rich, white, unwilling debutante from Manhattan, a poet aiming to
impress the program director for her own college applications. Soph is out and
proud, loudly political about feminism and the political imperative for
everyone to claim their sexuality; Tess is closeted, unable to risk coming out
before she’s safely in the military. At the weeklong Young Women’s Writing
Conference, they grapple with social justice, writing, their own maturity, and
first love. A transphobic attendee threatens a friend’s safety, and though both
protagonists learn to act as allies, the trans character looks out for herself,
showing the cis girls the limits of their good intentions. Analogies between
language and human interaction abound; one lovely vignette shows several girls
offering different names for bread rolls from their own cultural backgrounds. Nuance
is at the core of their journeys: context matters, and real leadership is
harder than simply condemning those who make harmful choices. Unrealistically
crafted dialogue is a distraction. An opening note directs interested readers
to an online list of trigger warnings.

In a narrative where learning a
writer’s craft fuels each coming-of-age, the clear literary metaphors for
diversity, tradition, and modernity are both thematic and thoroughly
satisfying. (Fiction. 13-17)

A woman navigates change and growth
while reckoning with memories of her youth in this debut novel.

Jill at first seems to have an
idyllic childhood. Her adoring, artistic mother, Rebecca, is raising her in the
Garden, a sprawling homestead full of creative horticultural designs. But Jill
has just turned 10 and increasingly asks questions about the frequent absence
of her father, Jay, a renowned photographer often away on assignment for months
at a time. The Garden remains a paradise, but Jill’s struggle to decode her
complicated family riddles is further challenged when her mother gives birth to
a baby and tragedy strikes shortly after. Jill’s best friend, Susie, supports
her throughout but must struggle with her own mother’s alcoholism. In
interspersed chapters told parallel to this childhood tale, a grown Jill is
trying to get her garden-ware business off the ground when a chance encounter
with the handsome and spontaneous Charlie changes her life forever. The two
feel an instant, deep connection, but their romance is complicated by
personality differences and Jill’s memories of her past. As Jill grows older, some
happy “endings” occur—a marriage, a successful business—but time continues to
bring new challenges and realizations. Some elements of Jill’s life are so sentimental
and picturesque that they border on the unrealistic or clichéd, yet Leet’s best
passages utilize this almost saccharine quality by contrasting it with real
change and pain. The book’s many episodes feel sometimes leisurely or overly
wandering and random, and its characters likewise can read both as
two-dimensional types sharing platitudes and as real individuals meditating on
the nature of happiness. Charlie and Jill’s early courtship, for example, feels
like a sketch of a romance lacking real characterization (Jill ultimately loses
her virginity to Charlie, but the reason she stops waiting is never fully
explained). Yet the give-and-take of their adult marriage resonates far more
effectively, mirroring the well-written, alternatingly cheery and sad dynamics among
Jill, Rebecca, and Jay.

A tale of a woman’s childhood and
adulthood employs both sweet clichés and genuine reflections on the passage of
time.

An intriguing combination of
economics, philosophy, history, and advice aimed at readers who wish to plan
for a meaningful retirement.

To debut author Wright, a financial
planner and retiree, retirement offers the chance to recapture the youthful
idealism lost to years of work, responsibility, and keeping up with the Joneses—an
opportunity to instead enjoy pursuing the pleasures of the mind and continuing
the kind of intellectual education most of us left off after college or high
school. To this end, he concentrates the first section of the book on how to
financially prepare for such a retirement. His plan to save enough money to
retire early, or at least have enough by age 65, involves, in part, excelling
in your career (hopefully one that you like) while at the same time eschewing
status-seeking conspicuous consumption. In other words, forget about the Joneses.
He suggests some investing but only if you are satisfied with a fair return
over time. If “you become greedy, you will be burned.” Business out of the way,
Wright launches into his passion: philosophy. Plato, Mill, Thoreau, Sartre, Schopenhauer,
Nietzsche, Freud; Wright covers them all logically and lucidly. With lively,
down-to-earth prose, he manages to present understandable thumbnail sketches of
each philosopher’s worldview, from the ancient Greeks to the present day, all
while demystifying complex ontological and epistemological concepts and
bringing to life the personalities behind them. Wright exudes an infectious enthusiasm
and offers something of a life preserver to those so jaded by their work lives
they “cannot conceive of any meaningful alternative to work, other than
death.”

A must for future and current
retirees; an entertaining excursion through the world of philosophy for
everyone else.

“Rain
poured. / Raccoon shivered. / Thunder roared. / Raccoon quivered.” Raccoon is not altogether comfortable
alone in his den as the storm outside rages. Nevertheless, he braves the wet
night in order to find some company with whom he can share his collywobbles. In
a narrative composed of onomatopoeia and occasional verse, Raccoon travels
through the woods, dropping in on Possum, Quail, and Woodchuck in turn, only to
be refused entry because there isn’t enough room. “Swish, swish, PLISH.”
Raccoon pushes on through the darkness and rain—Poh’s fine artwork resembles particularly
good theatrical backdrops against which her stylized figures stand out—until he
reaches Rabbit’s hutch, overrun with little rabbits. Raccoon thinks it’s
another bust until Rabbit says, “What good luck….Come right in. There’s always
room for a good friend.” Being rabbits, they have to be space-ready. Soon
enough Possum, Quail, and Woodchuck come knocking, seeking emotional shelter
from the storm, and they, too, are welcomed in for some carrot stew and to romp
with the 10 little rabbits. Come on in, the story says without saying it, which
is always the best way, there’s always room for one more. Readers may notice
that only Rabbit is identified as female, which reinforces more than one
stereotype.

“When cinders come showering down
from the skies… // And thunder is rumbling, / and smoke burns your eyes… / Then
run like a rabbit! Fly like the breeze— // Enzo the dragon is starting to
sneeze.” Enzo’s mother tells him to cover his sneeze, but he does not. It is so
explosive it launches him into the air, and the wingless dragon flies over
fields and pastures toward town. The peasants, a diverse bunch, flee their
thatched homes. A dark-skinned royal magician appears on the scene at the
behest of the king and the queen and sensibly prescribes fluids and rest. Like
many a cold-sufferer before him, Enzo resists: he wants to be made well
instantly and doesn’t need a nap. Along come the knights, but even they can’t
get close to Enzo. The magician makes a vat of “abraca-brew,” which Enzo drinks
before falling asleep. Once he wakes, he’s better. The text closes by
counseling readers to “be a good dragon” and cover their sneezes. Cyrus’
double-page spreads are bright and full of sneeze-driven energy, and
green-scaled, knobby-crested Enzo is appealing. The rhyming text amusingly
reproduces Enzo’s stuffy-nosed entreaties for help among other onomatopoeia, but
the story is the weak link. Literal-minded youngsters will wonder what’s going
on when both the wizard and Enzo seem to capitulate to each other, the former
by brewing the brew and the latter by drinking it and then napping. Is it a
trick? A sleeping potion? Or just inconsistent?

Great splatters of draconic mucus
aren’t enough to make this story soar. (Picture book. 3-7)